Benedict returns to Vatican for first time

VATICAN CITY Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI came back to the Vatican on Thursday for the first time since he resigned Feb. 28, beginning an unprecedented era for the Catholic Church of having a retired pope living alongside a reigning one.

Pope Francis welcomed Benedict outside his new retirement home – a converted monastery on the edge of the Vatican gardens – and the two went into an adjoining chapel to pray, the Vatican said.

The Vatican said that Benedict, 86, was pleased to be back and that he would – as he himself has said – “dedicate himself to the service of the church above all with prayer.” Francis, the statement said, welcomed him with “brotherly cordiality.”

Unlike the live coverage that accompanied Benedict's emotional farewell in February, no television footage of his return was provided by the Vatican on Thursday.

The low-key approach followed alarm over images transmitted on March 23, when Francis went to visit Benedict, at the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, where Benedict was living.

In that footage, Benedict appeared frail and thin, but Thursday's photo showed no signs of further decline in the 86-year-old.

“He is old and his strength is slowly ebbing,” the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said this week. “However, there is no special illness. He is an old man who is healthy.”